Former Soil Conservation Service employee and longtime writer Mat Taylor offers his outdoors column for Dispatch Record readers. He can be contacted at (254) 518-2262 or via e-mail at mntaylor@agristar.net. The general deer season opened on Saturday with good weather for hunting whitetails. Texas Parks and Wildlife biologists are predicting an average season, but that means good hunting due to the large number of deer that reside in the county and state.

Quail season opened Oct. 31, and TPWD biologists also are predicting an average season. Central Texas does not have many bobwhite quail, and across the state quail hunting can be hit or miss, considering these birds exist on the very western edge of their distribution in the U.S.

Vast expanses of good bobwhite habitat, however, remain in South Texas and the Rolling Plains region.

The Rolling Plains -- that area of the state east of the caprock from Abilene to Childress -- is considered one of the best quail hunting regions in the country. Each year thousands of hunters flock there to pursue these wary game birds.

Bobwhite production in South Texas and the Rolling Plains is dictated by the rainfall, or more specifically the lack of rain.

This past winter was the seconddriest winter in a row. Dry conditions limit the availability of late-winter and early-spring greens, an important part of the quail diet. Some areas fared better than others, and proper range management is also a part of the equation. Field reports indicate good carryover of birds in parts of the Rolling Plains and to a lesser degree in northern South Texas.

The statewide quail season runs through Feb. 28. Daily bag limit is 15, with 45 in possession. Legal shooting hours for all nonmigratory game birds are 30 minutes before sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset.

Texas Parks and Wildlife initiated statewide surveys in 1976 to monitor the quail population. The index uses randomly selected 20- mile roadside survey lines to discover annual population trends by region.

The trend information helps determine relative quail populations in Texas. Comparisons can be made between the average number of quail observed per route this year and the long-term mean (LTM) seen within an ecological region.

This year in the Rolling Plains the average number of bobwhites observed per route was 6.6, compared to 18.7 last year. This is well below the LTM of 21.9. Despite the low counts, enough young birds and coveys have been reported, and good hunting can be found in areas of good range management.

In South Texas, which has suffered extreme drought conditions for several years, the average number of bobwhites observed per route was 5.2, compared to 6.6 last year. This is well below the LTM of 18.9 and is predictive of a below-average hunting season in South Texas.

One bright spot in the quail season comes from the Trans- Pecos, the mountainous and desert area located west of the Pecos River. This region received great weather midsummer that spurred scale quail (also called blue quail) reproduction.

Greatly improved numbers have been confirmed by field reports and in survey results. The average number of scaled quail observed per route was 16.9, compared to 6.7 last year. This is very close to the LTM of 17.8, therefore quail hunting in the region should be very good.

Most hunters do not do much quail hunting until they have bagged their deer or after the deer season closes. That was always my case. I hunted mule deer and whitetails in far West Texas for about 20 years, and I shot a number of scaled quail every year after my deer hunting was over.

In this arid part of the state, quail numbers vary greatly. Some years on the ranch I hunted south of Marfa, it seemed there was a quail under every bush, but in other years one really had to hunt large areas to find a covey.

There were coveys of blues and bobwhites on the ranch I hunted near Iraan, and sometimes I would find both species running together. The rancher, however, requested that only blues be shot as there were a smaller number of bobwhites on the ranch.

I always enjoyed hunting blue quail; it was a test of stamina. They would rather run than fly, and that is one case where it is sporting to shoot at the birds running on the ground. There is an old saying about hunting blue quail: “You shoot them anyway you can.”